Microsoft will no longer offer Linux or Unix versions of its enterprise search products after a wave of releases set to ship in the first half of this year, the company announced in an official blog post Thursday.

Two things I do every morning no matter what are drink my morning coffee and read the latest Linux news. A day without either of them would be a disaster. Because getting Linux news is so important to me I’ve kept track of several Linux news sites and tested the value and focus of their articles.

Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo search and is seeking partners, including Time Warner and News Corp., to take over the rest of Yahoo's business

One of the most painful parts of writing this blog is the necessity to read mainstream news sites trying to describe free software. For example, this CNN article titled "Microsoft takes on the free world"...

"I noticed a discussion about Perl on Hacker News this morning. The linked article is about why the author likes Perl. As with all articles of this type, it attracted the usual "Ruby is better!!" comments.

Despite the rather surprising news that Microsoft won't have a comprehensive open source strategy until 2015, there's increasing evidence that it has at least established its shorter-term tactic: to head off the growing use of GNU/Linux.

Late last night I was surfing the web and reading the news on CNN.com, where upon I noticed their search bar at the top of the page. I decided to place the keyword "linux" into the search box; I clicked the search button to see if there was any Linux-related news that I might have missed. What I found in the paid search really shocked me and upset me. In the number one position, it said the following: "Compare Windows to Linux
www.Microsoft.com Making a Server Platform Decision? Read About Windows Server vs. Linux". The site in question: http://www.microsoft.com/

Innovation is at the heart of our enterprise search strategy, and a commitment to innovation is what brought FAST and Microsoft together.

So much for the cross-platform promises: Bjorn Olstad, a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and the CTO of FAST, has revealed that beyond 2010 there will be no more Microsoft FAST enterprise search products which support Linux and UNIX search cores.